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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830777">A Family that is Whole, If not Complete</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpief7/pseuds/magpief7'>magpief7</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, F/F, First Love, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Jester/Yasha eventually, Other, Softness, Trauma, WIP, brief description of gore, slow burn?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:22:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,692</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpief7/pseuds/magpief7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jester Lavorre learns what it feels like to have a family, even if that family is incomplete, especially if it comes when she least expects it. The absence of her father hurts, but two women come to support and love her more than she could have ever expected</p><p>Several episodes along that journey towards family and the many ways you can be loved.</p><p>"Jester warms at the thought of Beau and dreams of the safety she feels with this woman dressed in blue that was kind enough to bring her tea. There’s a new feeling there – it might be holy."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jester Lavorre &amp; Marion Lavorre | Ruby of the Sea, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett/Yasha</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue: A Castle Under the Ocean</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            The funny thing is, if you’re missing something in your life, its absence doesn’t feel like anything in particular. You can never know what you’re missing - how good things could be if your life was whole. Or alternatively, how things could be worse. It’s far too hard to know. The only thing <em>to </em>know is that your life has been built around a small fragment of emptiness.</p><p>            Absence reeks like old, untreated wound, and you don’t feel the pain until you learn enough words to describe it. The more you think about it, the more it stinks. The more you try to ignore it, the harder it is to sleep at night. But absence itself isn’t the thing that hurts you, instead, it’s the wanting to be whole. You might try, in your vast years of absence, to imagine what your life would be like if you could somehow fill that void. You might worry that the cut it left behind will never heal.</p><p>            You might turn to dreams. Wounds don’t hurt as much if they aren’t real. The only thing is that dreams never last long enough.</p><p>            You might turn to star-gazing because stars don’t have things like dreams or a family – <em>but they’re just so far away</em>.</p><p>            You might turn to books. The smell of paper. People in books have problems, yes, but they aren’t <em>your </em>problems. You get to see the ending too, which, even if it’s sad, is way more preferable to the anxiety of not knowing. Or of crossing that threshold and finding out. Stories are far better than wounds.</p><p>Better still when you make your own stories.</p>
<hr/><p>            She sits in her corner nook, looking out at the starry night sky. In her hands is a book about a group of orphans sailing across an ocean to find their parents. The window is open and the cold Nicodranas ocean breeze makes her shiver. Her cheeks are wet with tears. She is young. She knows that Mama has gone to bed, and so tries to cry silently so she can sleep. Not that Jester wouldn’t want Mama’s comfort right now, but this sort of thing has been happening too often lately, and she feels a little guilty about making Mama stay up.</p><p>            Jester holds her breath which only makes her ribs ache more. She shudders and breathes in shakily. She tries to convince herself it’s just because of the wind. Maybe that way she can avoid drowning in her own tears. Her nose is running but with her blurred vision she can’t see a handkerchief nearby so she wipes her nose on her dress instead. It’s the time of night when it feels like you’re the only person in the world. The candle Jester lit several hours ago has long since gone out, but the starlight was bright enough tonight to let her continue reading. It feels more appropriate anyways to be crying over a stupid book alone and in the dark. The wind is too cold and the stars too silent.</p><p>            Then, Jester hears some footsteps coming from Mama’s room next door. She freezes. After a minute or two, she sees the faint glow of candlelight from underneath the door. With the soft creak of wood, Marion slowly peeks in, candle in hand. Her hair is tossed over one shoulder and she looks tired.</p><p>            She says, “Oh, Jester…”</p><p>            “I’m sorry I- I didn’t mean to wake y- you up,” Jester says between sobs.</p><p>            “Oh, my sweet cinnamon bun… Come here. I wasn’t asleep.”</p><p>            Marion adjusts her pink robe to stave off the cold, gently walks over to Jester, and sits down next to her in the corner nook. Jester sits upright and fidgets with her dress, not meeting her mother’s eyes. Marion closes the window and puts her arm around Jester’s shoulder, kissing the top of her head. They sit there for a quiet few minutes together. Jester starts to feel warmth return to her fingertips. Her sobs have subsided to tears.</p><p>            Marion sighs and says, “Which book were you reading tonight?”</p><p>            “The one about the or- orphans on the ship.”</p><p>            “Is it any good?”</p><p>            “I read al- all of it today.”</p><p>            Marion chuckles lightly, “Oh! That good, huh?”</p><p>            “I don’t know… It still m- made me cry.”</p><p>            Marion pauses and purses her lips. “Do you want to talk about it?”</p><p>            Jester pouts a bit. “It- It was just that-“</p><p>            She breathes out shakily, “Th- the kids traveled across the sea an- and then they finally got to land an- and then their-“ She swallows hard, then continues, “Their pa- their parents were there waiting for them at the dock…”</p><p>            Marion rubs Jester’s back, her brows furrowing, “Mm…”</p><p>            “They just seemed s- so happy… I wish I had a dad… Or that I even knew w- what he looked like.”</p><p>            She starts sobbing again, throwing herself into her mother’s arms.</p><p>            “Oh, my littlest sapphire…”</p><p>            “I w- want him to c- come back to you, M- Mama!”</p><p>            “Me too, dear. It’s ok. It’s ok.” Marion’s voice starts to waver a little as she sheds a few tears onto her lap – or maybe those are Jester’s tears. It doesn’t really matter at this point. They both feel his absence the same.</p><p> </p><p>            After a few minutes of quiet and crying, Marion lifts her head, her voice soft, “Do you want to sleep with me tonight?”</p><p>            “No… I f- feel bad-“</p><p>            “You are <em>not</em> a burden Jester. You’re my beautiful, beautiful daughter, and I love you so much.”</p><p>            Jester whines a little, shifting uncomfortably.</p><p>            “You hear me? <em>I love you</em>.”</p><p>            “I lo- love you too.”</p><p>            “Let’s get you into your nightgown.”</p><p>            Marion gets up with a sigh, opens Jester’s wardrobe, and helps her out of her dress. Both of them climb into Jester’s bed. Marion goes to blow out the candle, but hesitates, saying, “We’re going to be ok, Jester. One day we’re going to have a family full of amazing people who won’t ever leave us. You’re going to find somebody that loves you <em>almost </em>as much as I do. And when you do, you’re going to be ok.”</p><p>            Jester stays quiet, but nods. Her mother ruffles her short, blue hair and blows out her candle.</p><p>            “Goodnight, my little sapphire.”</p><p>            “Goodnight mama.”</p><p>            With a quick hand gesture, Marion conjures the sounds of ocean waves to help them rest.</p><p>            It takes a few hours for Marion to fall asleep, grief for daughter’s loss and anger at her daughter’s father sitting heavily in her stomach.</p><p>            Jester dreams of an underwater palace, her father waiting for her inside.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Paying Attention</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ep 30. First night on the trip back from Shadycreek Run.</p><p>Beau tries to express how much she cares for Jester.<br/>Jester feels something new and drinks some tea.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            “Hey, I know I’m new here and I’m still getting to know everybody, but I saw the blue one sitting out in the snow alone and I made her some tea. She seems to like you, so I thought that she’d appreciate you bringing it to her instead of somebody she hasn’t quite had to chance to make an acquaintance of yet,” says Caduceus.</p><p>            Unfortunately, Beau was not paying attention. She <em>is</em> looking in the same direction Caduceus is, though. East, through the snowy night trees adorned in moonlight towards the silhouette in the distance that had horns and blue hair. Beau had been spending the past several minutes standing there, making sure to take stock of all of the tiniest details she could make out about the distant figure. After spending several months with her, Beau had been surprised to learn that she had never before noticed the texture of Jester’s cloak. Beau was supposed to be good at details, but somehow she had missed the fact that Jester’s cloak had faint flowers pressed into its velvet, spiraling around Jester’s back in a dance of springtime. Of course, it is cold at the present moment, but Beau is not paying attention. Not to Caduceus and definitely not to the way her arms were shivering. Jester is a friend, and Beau doesn’t like the idea of missing out on important details about her friend. Not if any of the Nein could disappear for weeks with no warning like Jester had.</p><p>            Beau noticed the flowers maybe seven minutes ago. When Caduceus started talking to her, she was studying the variety of colored jewelry decorating Jester’s horns. Brilliant red, green, and purple crystals glittering in the moonlight…</p><p>            With the sound of Caduceus’s voice, Beau suddenly realizes that her jaw was slightly ajar and clears her throat.</p><p>            “I’m sorry – what were you saying Caduceus?”</p><p>            “Ah, nothing, just thought your friend over there might want some tea.”</p><p>            The newcomer gestures gently towards Jester off in the distance. The steam coming from the kettle brushes past Beau’s face, making her remember hoe cold it is all of the sudden.</p><p>            “Oh, that’s a great idea actually, yeah.” Beau rubs her arms.</p><p>            “Here you go then,” Caduceus smiles, “Make sure to get some rest.”</p><p>            Beau takes the cup and the kettle from Caduceus’s large, warm hands. They are made of a green, jade-like stone and fired clay. The tea smells like lavender and honey.</p><p> </p><p>            Beau had been dealing with some business with Ophelia Mardoon when Jester announced that she needed some time to cool off before sleep. Caduceus and Caleb had made dinner and offered her some, but Jester said she wasn’t hungry. After Beau had finished handling work, she heard about Jester from a wry and tired Caleb and decided to keep watch over her. What had started as a vigilant watch – Beau’s muscles taut as a rope, ready for the first sign of danger – had slowly become a state of wonderment and shock when she squinted her eyes and for the first time saw the outline of the flowers that she had not noticed at all for the last few months.</p><p>            Beau had wanted to be with Jester, but hadn’t been sure how she could go about approaching her without coming off abrasively. But now, Beau has a reason. Since it was not her idea to bring the woman in the distance (with the flower-laden cloak and the jewelry that looks like a constellation) tea, Beau feels a new confidence inside herself. As far as Beau could tell, Jester isn’t moving at all, so if she <em>is</em> crying she’s doing a very good job at hiding it. The thought of Jester still wanting to hide her pain after all she had gone through recently sends a pang of guilt through Beau’s stomach. Jester probably wants some quiet time, so Beau starts to step lightly across the snow-laden ground, trying not to disturb her.</p><p>            Beau does everything she can not to make a sound. Step by step, making sure to avoid any stray leaves or branches. She manages to get about ten feet away from Jester without incident and stops, paralyzed with uncertainty about how to announce her presence. <em>Shit</em>. She should not have approached silently. Now anything she did was sure to scare Jester. Maybe she could just put the tea down and hope Jester turns around and sees that it’s there? Maybe she should just rip the bandage off and get it over with? Shit. Shit. <em>Ok, </em>Beau thought, <em>No, I’ll just turn around and stealth back to camp then redo everything making sure to make noise the whole time so Jester knows I’m coming. </em></p><p>            Beau starts carefully stepping backwards, but her legs are tense after having realized she had been seconds way from being a total asshole to her friend. One step. Success. No noise. Two steps and Beau watches Jester like a hawk, looking for any signs of movement. Three steps and Beau starts taking in new details of the woman in front of her. Four steps and…</p><p><em>            Her hair.</em> <em>Oh, her hair</em>. <em>Of all of the things not to notice, how could Beau have missed her hair? Beau saw blue. She saw an ocean there. She saw sapphire and velvet. In the curls of her hair, Beau found a multitude of Blue. Some strands of hair were darker than the others, some were almost white. It might have reminded Beau of the kinds of abstract paintings that she used to see in art museums and had hated but that her parents had loved, but No. In this moment as she took her fourth step back towards the camp and her other, warmer friends, Beau saw vast nebulas, fine yarn, precious metals. She saw an ocean there. Her breath was gladly taken from her lungs and given to that vast mystery she saw in the hair of the woman sitting in the snow before her…</em></p><p>            And she steps on a twig. <em><span class="u">F u c k</span></em><span class="u">.</span></p><p>            Jester yelps and jolts to attention, quickly scrambling away from the sound on her hands and knees. She turns around, making gestures with her hands to conjure some kind of magic. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot, but when she sees that it’s just Beau, she collapses into the snow and starts openly weeping.</p><p>            Beau is <em>mortified</em>.</p><p>            Caleb shouts from off in the distance, “<em>Alles gut, </em>Beauregard?!”</p><p>            “YEAH, EVERYTHING’S <em>FINE</em> CALEB!! FUCK OFF!”</p><p>            Back near the campfire, Caleb has a headache. “Guess it’s just you and me tonight, eh buddy?” He murmurs to his sleeping cat lying beside him.</p>
<hr/><p>            Jester does not know how she is going to be able to sleep tonight. Even though she is finally safe again, when she looks at her friends – looks at their clothes and backpacks and weapons – she feels a new knife in her stomach or maybe another set of manacles around her wrists. <em>What if they are taken away from me or I am taken away from them? Another loss. Another absence. Words are not enough to express her feelings, but Oh, how she misses </em>Molly. It makes her feel like crying. Her eyes have had plenty of time to perfect that craft recently - she doesn’t feel the need to practice any more. Instead, to keep herself occupied, she decides to become familiar with snow on a first-name basis. What that first name is, she doesn’t know yet. She looks forward to finding out.</p><p>            Sleep will come after the cold night sky lulls her into a trance and the snow numbs her skin enough to the point where if her body decides to conjure new knives into her stomach, she won’t feel them. So there she sits, some distance away from the camp made by the friends that had removed the first set of manacles from her wrists. She numbly extends and retracts her fingers over and over again, searching for some kind of meaning in the white glow beneath her. The snow makes her fingertips cold, her wrists, hot and painful.</p><p>            Her mind wanders to her mother, and how much she misses her. Maybe if she sits here long enough, there will be enough snow around her feet to make a snow fortress.</p><p>            The walls would tower high, at least seven feet tall. The snow would be packed into tight bricks so that the walls would not melt if she wanted to have a fire pit inside. The roof would be made of a thin layer of ice; enough for protection from the wind but still crystalline enough to see the sky. Light would be provided by magical gem lamps embedded in the floor. Jester starts to think about what rooms she would want in her fortress of snow, safe from the wind, but the thought quickly becomes too tiring. She thinks to herself that looking up at the night sky would be enough for now. It’s her fortress after all. She could do anything in her fortress.</p><p>
  <em>            Maybe that’s what dad’s fortress is like. Safe. Cold. A home for her and for her family.</em>
</p><p>            Jester starts to fade away into her fantasy of watching the night sky refracted through a crystalline roof.</p><p>            Then, before she can even register what’s happening, a jolt of adrenaline rushes through her body. A yelp escapes from her lips and she starts trying to scramble away from the loud <em>snap </em>that she had heard behind her. <em>Not again</em>. This time, the cold in Jester’s bones gives her immense power. The cold courses through her limbs and towards her fingertips and starts to come out in the form of powerful magic that Jester was sure would kill anybody who would try to take her away from her friends again. Jester would see her mother soon. No more. No. More.</p><p>            But time catches up with her as she turns around to see her assailant and sees that it’s a friend, dressed in blue.</p><p>            Jester collapses onto the ground, all of the ice walls she had built in her head and with her cold, cold fingertips collapse too. She had thought that she had mastered crying, but the tears that stream from her eyes in this moment feel different. Maybe it’s the warmth they brought to her face or the fact that her vision started blurring like a wall of an ice fortress. She hears Beau yelling to someone but doesn’t care to make out the words. She cries with an unmatched intensity for a few seconds, hands on her face, until she realizes that Beau was standing there and probably felt awful, oh no oh no oh no.</p><p>
  <em>Swallow, then stop crying.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>            “Hi Beau.” Jester’s voice cracks and the words came out a little louder and harsher than Jester wants them to be. She sniffs.</p><p>            “Shit. Fuck. Sorry Jester I <em>really </em>didn’t mean to scare you.”</p><p>            “No it’s ok, it’s ok! You just caught me in the middle of some day–dreaming, that’s all.”</p><p>            “Are you- Are you ok?”</p><p>            “I’m fine, Beau. Don’t worry about me.”</p><p>            “Aren’t you cold?”</p><p>            “<em>Beau, </em>I’m fine. I don’t get cold, remember?”</p><p>            The thought pops through Beau’s head that she must seem like <em>such </em>an asshole right now. <em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>            “Right, right, right, sorry.”</p><p>            Beau just stands there, forgetting about the tea kettle in her hands. She is looking at Jester and noticing that while Jester is smiling weakly, her eyes are very bloodshot. <em>Oh, fuck. She must’ve been crying this whole time, why didn’t I come over sooner?</em></p><p>            There’s silence for a bit. A stray winter leaf falls between them.</p><p>            “Did… Did you want something?” Jester manages.</p><p>            “Oh, shit. Yeah. Um, so Caduceus made some tea,” she holds up the tea, “-he makes like <em>really </em>good tea - and he thought you looked like, cold or whatever, so I said I’d bring it to you and uh… yeah. Here.”</p><p>            Beau holds out the kettle and cup, grimacing a little.</p><p>            “Oh…” Jester clears her throat, “I’m ok.”</p><p>            “Oh- ok. I guess I’ll just… I’ll just go back to the… to the camp now”.</p><p>            Jester had thought that she had gained control over her body again – the tears had stopped and her muscles were still once more – but at the thought of Beau leaving, her muscles contract and the breath she was holding on to for dear life is forced out of her body in one sharp, painful exhale.</p><p>            “<em>Don’t go</em>,” She breathes.</p><p>            “Oh- ok.” Beau feels anxious. Her voice catches in her throat. Maybe she isn’t being an asshole. Beau thought she knew her own feelings but this one was… new.</p><p>            Embracing that new, maybe holy feeling, Beau sets the kettle and the cup on the ground. Some steam rises up from the snow beneath them and the heat melts enough of it that the green of the grass peeks through the wintery field. Beau awkwardly shuffles into a sitting position at Jester’s side, both of them looking back at the campfire. Jester stays completely still.</p>
<hr/><p>            There was no breath between the two of them. Each not wanting to disturb the other. Each for their own reasons.</p><p>
  <em>Crackle of fire, whisper of tree.</em>
</p><p>No breath.</p><p>
  <em>Cold of the ground, cold of the sky.</em>
</p><p>No movement.</p><p>
  <em>The tea growing colder, the night growing darker.</em>
</p><p>No running.</p><p>
  <em>The white of the snow, the green of the grass.</em>
</p><p>No words.</p><p><em>Hands, feet</em>.</p><p>No wind.</p><p><em>Faces, eyes</em>.</p><p>No tears.</p><p>
  <em>Two red hearts.</em>
</p><p>Beating fast.</p>
<hr/><p>            Jester quietly, and <em>oh so slowly</em> tilts her head sideways so that it rests on Beau’s shoulder. This time, it is Beau’s body that’s the one that is forced to let out a sharp exhale. They stay this way for a while.</p><p>            “A- Are you sure you don’t want tea? It’ll probably do you a lot of good.”</p><p>            Jester shifts in place a little, “Tea sounds good now, actually.”</p><p>            Jester takes her head away from Beau’s shoulder, which pains Beau a little, but Beau clings to the knowledge that Jester won’t be leaving any time soon and the pain subsides.</p><p>            The tea is poured into the cup. It’s warmer than Beau thought it would be after all of the time it spent sitting in the snow. <em>Good.</em> It needs to be warm for Jester.</p><p>            Jester takes the cup and weakly brings it to her lips, taking a sip<em>. It’s warm</em>.</p><p>            “Thank you, Beau. It’s <em>really</em> good.”</p><p>            “Yeah. No problem.”</p><p>            “You should try it.”</p><p>            “Oh, there’s only the one cup, so…”</p><p>            Jester pushes the cup into Beau’s hands. “I’m not going to finish it on my own, <em>Beau</em>.”</p><p>            “Ok, fine,” Beau says with a little smirk.</p><p>
  <em>It’s good.</em>
</p><p><em>            Jester has been through enough, </em>Beau thinks<em>, I’ll carry the burden tonight. </em>She won’t sleep, and that’s ok. But this time, Beau pays attention to everything. She is going to keep Jester safe this time.</p><p>
  
</p><p>            The warmth between them flows from the tea to their bodies, then from Beau’s body to Jester’s body in their close embrace until Beau’s body shivers and it becomes Jester’s turn to provide the warmth. Jester eventually nods off and dreams of her father’s ocean palace, frozen crystals decorating the walls. This time though, the dream is different. Her father is there, yes, but <em>Beau</em> is the one waiting inside for her. Jester warms at this image and dreams of the safety she feels with this woman dressed in blue that was kind enough to bring her tea. There’s a new feeling there – it might be holy.</p><p>
  
</p><p>            In the distance, Yasha walks away into the countryside. Jester will mourn <em>that</em> loss in the morning.</p>
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